Found a couple of articles out there in the world that relate to my quadrant of interests, aka queers, jews, babies, acting…. on the upside of life, Vermont has joined Iowa in the list of places more enlightened than California. Although my smart friend Jeff did mention that Iowa enjoys the peculiar distinction of being the first state to legalize Gay marriage due to its residents voting in the opposite direction. Okay- it’s maybe not the gayborhood yet…Still, technically speaking its ahead. Anyhow, that’s the bright spot, other than that I got a really disturbing article from Haaretz about racist and misogynist t-shirts IDF soldiers are having printed. Check it out at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html I own one such shirt- by which I mean a shirt printed by an army unit to commemorate the end of a training. It is bright pink and features a man yelling and holding a gun. It came to me because someone in my ex’s unit had ordered the color spontaneously but balked when it actually arrived. It was a large and had a hood to boot, until i modified it to be vaguely wearable. I like it a lot but don’t want to be even remotely associated with the kind of shirts mentioned in said article. Why do people suck so much sometimes? It’s like its a messed up situation not made better by inciteful fashion, jeez. At least the kids in my youth movement are doing something about it. I was directed to this piece of info by a letter written by fellow Habo Head- http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2009/4/7/between-bias-and-a-hard-place

As to Babies- there was a great article in the New Yorker about breast pumps and their evil side. Now, I know that they are part of how we American women are being denied reasonable maternity leave and that while they enable more women to work more, this isn’t in itself necessarily a blessing- plus they are based in milking machine devices. I also liked the history part of the article where I learned that America had a motherhood craze in the mid19th century and that women supposedly ran out of breastmilk or at least thought they had at one point- fascinating really. Here it is: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/19/090119fa_fact_lepore